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The Advancement of Learning

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II. (1) And as for the disgraces which learning receiveth from
politics, they be of this nature: that learning doth soften men's
minds, and makes them more unapt for the honour and exercise of
arms; that it doth mar and pervert men's dispositions for matter of
government and policy, in making them too curious and irresolute by
variety of reading, or too peremptory or positive by strictness of
rules and axioms, or too immoderate and overweening by reason of the
greatness of examples, or too incompatible and differing from the
times by reason of the dissimilitude of examples; or at least, that
it doth divert men's travails from action and business, and bringeth
them to a love of leisure and privateness; and that it doth bring
into states a relaxation of discipline, whilst every man is more
ready to argue than to obey and execute. Out of this conceit Cato,
surnamed the Censor, one of the wisest men indeed that ever lived,
when Carneades the philosopher came in embassage to Rome, and that
the young men of Rome began to flock about him, being allured with
the sweetness and majesty of his eloquence and learning, gave
counsel in open senate that they should give him his despatch with
all speed, lest he should infect and enchant the minds and
affections of the youth, and at unawares bring in an alteration of
the manners and customs of the state. Out of the same conceit or
humour did Virgil, turning his pen to the advantage of his country
and the disadvantage of his own profession, make a kind of
separation between policy and government, and between arts and
sciences, in the verses so much renowned, attributing and
challenging the one to the Romans, and leaving and yielding the
other to the Grecians: Tu regere imperio popules, Romane, memento,
Hae tibi erunt artes, &c. So likewise we see that Anytus, the
accuser of Socrates, laid it as an article of charge and accusation
against him, that he did, with the variety and power of his
discourses and disputatious, withdraw young men from due reverence
to the laws and customs of their country, and that he did profess a
dangerous and pernicious science, which was to make the worse matter
seem the better, and to suppress truth by force of eloquence and
speech.

(2) But these and the like imputations have rather a countenance of
gravity than any ground of justice: for experience doth warrant
that, both in persons and in times, there hath been a meeting and
concurrence in learning and arms, flourishing and excelling in the
same men and the same ages. For as 'for men, there cannot be a
better nor the hike instance as of that pair, Alexander the Great
and Julius Caesar, the Dictator; whereof the one was Aristotle's
scholar in philosophy, and the other was Cicero's rival in
eloquence; or if any man had rather call for scholars that were
great generals, than generals that were great scholars, let him take
Epaminondas the Theban, or Xenophon the Athenian; whereof the one
was the first that abated the power of Sparta, and the other was the
first that made way to the overthrow of the monarchy of Persia. And
this concurrence is yet more visible in times than in persons, by
how much an age is greater object than a man. For both in Egypt,
Assyria, Persia, Graecia, and Rome, the same times that are most
renowned for arms are, likewise, most admired for learning, so that
the greatest authors and philosophers, and the greatest captains and
governors, have lived in the same ages. Neither can it otherwise
he: for as in man the ripeness of strength of the body and mind
cometh much about an age, save that the strength of the body cometh
somewhat the more early, so in states, arms and learning, whereof
the one correspondeth to the body, the other to the soul of man,
have a concurrence or near sequence in times.

(3) And for matter of policy and government, that learning, should
rather hurt, than enable thereunto, is a thing very improbable; we
see it is accounted an error to commit a natural body to empiric
physicians, which commonly have a few pleasing receipts whereupon
they are confident and adventurous, but know neither the causes of
diseases, nor the complexions of patients, nor peril of accidents,
nor the true method of cures; we see it is a like error to rely upon
advocates or lawyers which are only men of practice, and not
grounded in their books, who are many times easily surprised when
matter falleth out besides their experience, to the prejudice of the
causes they handle: so by like reason it cannot be but a matter of
doubtful consequence if states be managed by empiric statesmen, not
well mingled with men grounded in learning. But contrariwise, it is
almost without instance contradictory that ever any government was
disastrous that was in the hands of learned governors. For
howsoever it hath been ordinary with politic men to extenuate and
disable learned men by the names of pedantes; yet in the records of
time it appeareth in many particulars that the governments of
princes in minority (notwithstanding the infinite disadvantage of
that kind of state)--have nevertheless excelled the government of
princes of mature age, even for that reason which they seek to
traduce, which is that by that occasion the state hath been in the
hands of pedantes: for so was the state of Rome for the first five
years, which are so much magnified, during the minority of Nero, in
the hands of Seneca, a pedenti; so it was again, for ten years'
space or more, during the minority of Gordianus the younger, with
great applause and contentation in the hands of Misitheus, a
pedanti: so was it before that, in the minority of Alexander
Severus, in like happiness, in hands not much unlike, by reason of
the rule of the women, who were aided by the teachers and
preceptors. Nay, let a man look into the government of the Bishops
of Rome, as by name, into the government of Pius Quintus and Sextus
Quintus in our times, who were both at their entrance esteemed but
as pedantical friars, and he shall find that such Popes do greater
things, and proceed upon truer principles of state, than those which
have ascended to the papacy from an education and breeding in
affairs of state and courts of princes; for although men bred in
learning are perhaps to seek in points of convenience and
accommodating for the present, which the Italians call ragioni di
stato, whereof the same Pius Quintus could not hear spoken with
patience, terming them inventions against religion and the moral
virtues; yet on the other side, to recompense that, they are perfect
in those same plain grounds of religion, justice, honour, and moral
virtue, which if they be well and watchfully pursued, there will be
seldom use of those other, no more than of physic in a sound or
well-dieted body. Neither can the experience of one man's life
furnish examples and precedents for the event of one man's life.
For as it happeneth sometimes that the grandchild, or other
descendant, resembleth the ancestor more than the son; so many times
occurrences of present times may sort better with ancient examples
than with those of the later or immediate times; and lastly, the wit
of one man can no more countervail learning than one man's means can
hold way with a common purse.

(4) And as for those particular seducements or indispositions of the
mind for policy and government, which learning is pretended to
insinuate; if it be granted that any such thing be, it must be
remembered withal that learning ministereth in every of them greater
strength of medicine or remedy than it offereth cause of
indisposition or infirmity. For if by a secret operation it make
men perplexed and irresolute, on the other side by plain precept it
teacheth them when and upon what ground to resolve; yea, and how to
carry things in suspense, without prejudice, till they resolve. If
it make men positive and regular, it teacheth them what things are
in their nature demonstrative, and what are conjectural, and as well
the use of distinctions and exceptions, as the latitude of
principles and rules. If it mislead by disproportion or
dissimilitude of examples, it teacheth men the force of
circumstances, the errors of comparisons, and all the cautions of
application; so that in all these it doth rectify more effectually
than it can pervert. And these medicines it conveyeth into men's
minds much more forcibly by the quickness and penetration of
examples. For let a man look into the errors of Clement VII., so
lively described by Guicciardini, who served under him, or into the
errors of Cicero, painted out by his own pencil in his Epistles to
Atticus, and he will fly apace from being irresolute. Let him look
into the errors of Phocion, and he will beware how he be obstinate
or inflexible. Let him but read the fable of Ixion, and it will
hold him from being vaporous or imaginative. Let him look into the
errors of Cato II., and he will never be one of the Antipodes, to
tread opposite to the present world.

(5) And for the conceit that learning should dispose men to leisure
and privateness, and make men slothful: it were a strange thing if
that which accustometh the mind to a perpetual motion and agitation
should induce slothfulness, whereas, contrariwise, it may be truly
affirmed that no kind of men love business for itself but those that
are learned; for other persons love it for profit, as a hireling
that loves the work for the wages; or for honour, as because it
beareth them up in the eyes of men, and refresheth their reputation,
which otherwise would wear; or because it putteth them in mind of
their fortune, and giveth them occasion to pleasure and displeasure;
or because it exerciseth some faculty wherein they take pride, and
so entertaineth them in good-humour and pleasing conceits towards
themselves; or because it advanceth any other their ends. So that
as it is said of untrue valours, that some men's valours are in the
eyes of them that look on, so such men's industries are in the eyes
of others, or, at least, in regard of their own designments; only
learned men love business as an action according to nature, as
agreeable to health of mind as exercise is to health of body, taking
pleasure in the action itself, and not in the purchase, so that of
all men they are the most indefatigable, if it be towards any
business which can hold or detain their mind.

(6) And if any man be laborious in reading and study, and yet idle
in business and action, it groweth from some weakness of body or
softness of spirit, such as Seneca speaketh of: Quidam tam sunt
umbratiles, ut putent in turbido esse quicquid in luce est; and not
of learning: well may it be that such a point of a man's nature may
make him give himself to learning, but it is not learning that
breedeth any such point in his nature.

(7) And that learning should take up too much time or leisure: I
answer, the most active or busy man that hath been or can be, hath
(no question) many vacant times of leisure while he expecteth the
tides and returns of business (except he be either tedious and of no
despatch, or lightly and unworthily ambitious to meddle in things
that may be better done by others), and then the question is but how
those spaces and times of leisure shall be filled and spent; whether
in pleasure or in studies; as was well answered by Demosthenes to
his adversary AEschines, that was a man given to pleasure, and told
him "That his orations did smell of the lamp." "Indeed," said
Demosthenes, "there is a great difference between the things that
you and I do by lamp-light." So as no man need doubt that learning
will expel business, but rather it will keep and defend the
possession of the mind against idleness and pleasure, which
otherwise at unawares may enter to the prejudice of both.

(8) Again, for that other conceit that learning should undermine the
reverence of laws and government, it is assuredly a mere depravation
and calumny, without all shadow of truth. For to say that a blind
custom of obedience should be a surer obligation than duty taught
and understood, it is to affirm that a blind man may tread surer by
a guide than a seeing man can by a light. And it is without all
controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle,
generous, manageable, and pliant to government; whereas ignorance
makes them churlish, thwart, and mutinous: and the evidence of time
doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous,
rude, and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults,
seditious, and changes.

(9) And as to the judgment of Cato the Censor, he was well punished
for his blasphemy against learning, in the same kind wherein he
offended; for when he was past threescore years old, he was taken
with an extreme desire to go to school again, and to learn the Greek
tongue, to the end to peruse the Greek authors; which doth well
demonstrate that his former censure of the Grecian learning was
rather an affected gravity, than according to the inward sense of
his own opinion. And as for Virgil's verses, though it pleased him
to brave the world in taking to the Romans the art of empire, and
leaving to others the arts of subjects, yet so much is manifest--
that the Romans never ascended to that height of empire till the
time they had ascended to the height of other arts. For in the time
of the two first Caesars, which had the art of government in
greatest perfection, there lived the best poet, Virgilius Maro; the
best historiographer, Titus Livius; the best antiquary, Marcus
Varro; and the best or second orator, Marcus Cicero, that to the
memory of man are known. As for the accusation of Socrates, the
time must be remembered when it was prosecuted; which was under the
Thirty Tyrants, the most base, bloody, and envious persons that have
governed; which revolution of state was no sooner over but Socrates,
whom they had made a person criminal, was made a person heroical,
and his memory accumulate with honours divine and human; and those
discourses of his which were then termed corrupting of manners, were
after acknowledged for sovereign medicines of the mind and manners,
and so have been received ever since till this day. Let this,
therefore, serve for answer to politiques, which in their humorous
severity, or in their feigned gravity, have presumed to throw
imputations upon learning; which redargution nevertheless (save that
we know not whether our labours may extend to other ages) were not
needful for the present, in regard of the love and reverence towards
learning which the example and countenance of two so learned
princes, Queen Elizabeth and your Majesty, being as Castor and
Pollux, lucida sidera, stars of excellent light and most benign
influence, hath wrought in all men of place and authority in our
nation.

III. (1) Now therefore we come to that third sort of discredit or
diminution of credit that groweth unto learning from learned men
themselves, which commonly cleaveth fastest: it is either from
their fortune, or from their manners, or from the nature of their
studies. For the first, it is not in their power; and the second is
accidental; the third only is proper to be handled: but because we
are not in hand with true measure, but with popular estimation and
conceit, it is not amiss to speak somewhat of the two former. The
derogations therefore which grow to learning from the fortune or
condition of learned men, are either in respect of scarcity of
means, or in respect of privateness of life and meanness of
employments.

(2) Concerning want, and that it is the case of learned men usually
to begin with little, and not to grow rich so fast as other men, by
reason they convert not their labours chiefly to lucre and increase,
it were good to leave the commonplace in commendation of povery to
some friar to handle, to whom much was attributed by Machiavel in
this point when he said, "That the kingdom of the clergy had been
long before at an end, if the reputation and reverence towards the
poverty of friars had not borne out the scandal of the superfluities
and excesses of bishops and prelates." So a man might say that the
felicity and delicacy of princes and great persons had long since
turned to rudeness and barbarism, if the poverty of learning had not
kept up civility and honour of life; but without any such
advantages, it is worthy the observation what a reverent and
honoured thing poverty of fortune was for some ages in the Roman
state, which nevertheless was a state without paradoxes. For we see
what Titus Livius saith in his introduction: Caeterum aut me amor
negotii suscepti fallit aut nulla unquam respublica nec major, nec
sanctior, nec bonis exemplis ditior fuit; nec in quam tam sero
avaritia luxuriaque immigraverint; nec ubi tantus ac tam diu
paupertati ac parsimoniae honos fuerit. We see likewise, after that
the state of Rome was not itself, but did degenerate, how that
person that took upon him to be counsellor to Julius Caesar after
his victory where to begin his restoration of the state, maketh it
of all points the most summary to take away the estimation of
wealth: Verum haec et omnia mala pariter cum honore pecuniae
desinent; si neque magistratus, neque alia vulgo cupienda, venalia
erunt. To conclude this point: as it was truly said that Paupertas
est virtutis fortuna, though sometimes it come from vice, so it may
be fitly said that, though some times it may proceed from
misgovernment and accident. Surely Solomon hath pronounced it both
in censure, Qui festinat ad divitias non erit insons; and in
precept, "Buy the truth, and sell it not; and so of wisdom and
knowledge;" judging that means were to be spent upon learning, and
not learning to be applied to means. And as for the privateness or
obscureness (as it may be in vulgar estimation accounted) of life of
contemplative men, it is a theme so common to extol a private life,
not taxed with sensuality and sloth, in comparison and to the
disadvantage of a civil life, for safety, liberty, pleasure, and
dignity, or at least freedom from indignity, as no man handleth it
but handleth it well; such a consonancy it hath to men's conceits in
the expressing, and to men's consents in the allowing. This only I
will add, that learned men forgotten in states and not living in the
eyes of men, are like the images of Cassius and Brutus in the
funeral of Junia, of which, not being represented as many others
were, Tacitus saith, Eo ipso praefulgebant quod non visebantur.

(3) And for meanness of employment, that which is most traduced to
contempt is that the government of youth is commonly allotted to
them; which age, because it is the age of least authority, it is
transferred to the disesteeming of those employments wherein youth
is conversant, and which are conversant about youth. But how unjust
this traducement is (if you will reduce things from popularity of
opinion to measure of reason) may appear in that we see men are more
curious what they put into a new vessel than into a vessel seasoned;
and what mould they lay about a young plant than about a plant
corroborate; so as this weakest terms and times of all things use to
have the best applications and helps. And will you hearken to the
Hebrew rabbins? "Your young men shall see visions, and your old men
shall dream dreams:" say they, youth is the worthier age, for that
visions are nearer apparitions of God than dreams? And let it be
noted that howsoever the condition of life of pedantes hath been
scorned upon theatres, as the ape of tyranny; and that the modern
looseness or negligence hath taken no due regard to the choice of
schoolmasters and tutors; yet the ancient wisdom of the best times
did always make a just complaint, that states were too busy with
their laws and too negligent in point of education: which excellent
part of ancient discipline hath been in some sort revived of late
times by the colleges of the Jesuits; of whom, although in regard of
their superstition I may say, Quo meliores, eo deteriores; yet in
regard of this, and some other points concerning human learning and
moral matters, I may say, as Agesilaus said to his enemy
Pharnabazus, Talis quum sis, utunam noster esses. And that much
touching the discredits drawn from the fortunes of learned men.

(4) As touching the manners of learned men, it is a thing personal
and individual: and no doubt there be amongst them, as in other
professions, of all temperatures: but yet so as it is not without
truth which is said, that Abeunt studua in mores, studies have an
influence and operation upon the manners of those that are
conversant in them.

(5) But upon an attentive and indifferent review, I for my part
cannot find any disgrace to learning can proceed from the manners of
learned men; not inherent to them as they are learned; except it be
a fault (which was the supposed fault of Demosthenes, Cicero, Cato
II., Seneca, and many more) that because the times they read of are
commonly better than the times they live in, and the duties taught
better than the duties practised, they contend sometimes too far to
bring things to perfection, and to reduce the corruption of manners
to honesty of precepts or examples of too great height. And yet
hereof they have caveats enough in their own walks. For Solon, when
he was asked whether he had given his citizens the best laws,
answered wisely, "Yea, of such as they would receive:" and Plato,
finding that his own heart could not agree with the corrupt manners
of his country, refused to bear place or office, saying, "That a
man's country was to be used as his parents were, that is, with
humble persuasions, and not with contestations." And Caesar's
counsellor put in the same caveat, Non ad vetera instituta revocans
quae jampridem corruptis moribus ludibrio sunt; and Cicero noteth
this error directly in Cato II. when he writes to his friend
Atticus, Cato optime sentit, sed nocet interdum reipublicae;
loquitur enim tanquam in republica Platonis, non tanquam in faece
Romuli. And the same Cicero doth excuse and expound the
philosophers for going too far and being too exact in their
prescripts when he saith, Isti ipse praeceptores virtutis et
magistri videntur fines officiorum paulo longius quam natura vellet
protulisse, ut cum ad ultimum animo contendissemus, ibi tamen, ubi
oportet, consisteremus: and yet himself might have said, Monitis
sum minor ipse meis; for it was his own fault, though not in so
extreme a degree.

(6) Another fault likewise much of this kind hath been incident to
learned men, which is, that they have esteemed the preservation,
good, and honour of their countries or masters before their own
fortunes or safeties. For so saith Demosthenes unto the Athenians:
"If it please you to note it, my counsels unto you are not such
whereby I should grow great amongst you, and you become little
amongst the Grecians; but they be of that nature as they are
sometimes not good for me to give, but are always good for you to
follow." And so Seneca, after he had consecrated that Quinquennium
Neronis to the eternal glory of learned governors, held on his
honest and loyal course of good and free counsel after his master
grew extremely corrupt in his government. Neither can this point
otherwise be, for learning endueth men's minds with a true sense of
the frailty of their persons, the casualty of their fortunes, and
the dignity of their soul and vocation, so that it is impossible for
them to esteem that any greatness of their own fortune can be a true
or worthy end of their being and ordainment, and therefore are
desirous to give their account to God, and so likewise to their
masters under God (as kings and the states that they serve) in those
words, Ecce tibi lucrefeci, and not Ecce mihi lucrefeci; whereas the
corrupter sort of mere politiques, that have not their thoughts
established by learning in the love and apprehension of duty, nor
never look abroad into universality, do refer all things to
themselves, and thrust themselves into the centre of the world, as
if all lines should meet in them and their fortunes, never caring in
all tempests what becomes of the ship of state, so they may save
themselves in the cockboat of their own fortune; whereas men that
feel the weight of duty and know the limits of self-love use to make
good their places and duties, though with peril; and if they stand
in seditious and violent alterations, it is rather the reverence
which many times both adverse parts do give to honesty, than any
versatile advantage of their own carriage. But for this point of
tender sense and fast obligation of duty which learning doth endue
the mind withal, howsoever fortune may tax it, and many in the depth
of their corrupt principles may despise it, yet it will receive an
open allowance, and therefore needs the less disproof or excuse.

(7) Another fault incident commonly to learned men, which may be
more properly defended than truly denied, is that they fail
sometimes in applying themselves to particular persons, which want
of exact application ariseth from two causes--the one, because the
largeness of their mind can hardly confine itself to dwell in the
exquisite observation or examination of the nature and customs of
one person, for it is a speech for a lover, and not for a wise man,
Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus. Nevertheless I shall
yield that he that cannot contract the sight of his mind as well as
disperse and dilate it, wanteth a great faculty. But there is a
second cause, which is no inability, but a rejection upon choice and
judgment. For the honest and just bounds of observation by one
person upon another extend no further but to understand him
sufficiently, whereby not to give him offence, or whereby to be able
to give him faithful counsel, or whereby to stand upon reasonable
guard and caution in respect of a man's self. But to be speculative
into another man to the end to know how to work him, or wind him, or
govern him, proceedeth from a heart that is double and cloven, and
not entire and ingenuous; which as in friendship it is want of
integrity, so towards princes or superiors is want of duty. For the
custom of the Levant, which is that subjects do forbear to gaze or
fix their eyes upon princes, is in the outward ceremony barbarous,
but the moral is good; for men ought not, by cunning and bent
observations, to pierce and penetrate into the hearts of kings,
which the Scripture hath declared to be inscrutable.

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